Re: Double cross

Double cross began in London during the first half of the eighteenth
centuary with a 'thief=taker' called Jonathan Wilde. In the days
before a regular police service thief-takers were paid a bounty
for criminals delivered to the courts. Wilde got his information
mainly through informers, often criminals themselves but protected
by Wilde as long as they were of use to him. Wilde kept a book marking
these with a cross. If they did not come up with enough or the right
imformation or could no longer pay Wilde for his silence, he would
add a second cross to thier names and deliver them to the magistrates
for trial and most likely a hanging. These unfortunates would know
they had been double crossed. Wilde also used blackmail to force
people to rob and murder on his behalf. He was eventually betrayed
and went to the gallows himself.
: : I noticed double cross in the general list with no origin. It's
my understanding that it refers to the Double Cross Committee,
: : or Group, or something like that, a group attached to British
intelligence in World War II. Once they cracked the German code,
they would wait for German
: : agents to arrive in Britain and give them a choice: stay and
feed false information to Berlin or be executed. The term is pretty
: : self-explanatory.

: There's an earlier use of the term:

: DOUBLE CROSS - "Double cross came into use only in about 1870,
apparently as an English racing term describing the common practice
of winning a race after promising to arrange a 'cross,' to lose
it. 'Cross,' for 'a prearranged swindle or fix,' dates back to the
early 19th century and was used by Thackeray in 'Vanity Fair' to
describe a fixed horse race. The adjective 'double' here is meant
in its sense of 'duplicity,' so 'double cross' really means 'dishonesty
about dishonesty'; in fact, the earlier expression 'to put on the
double double' meant the same as 'double cross.'" From the "Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins" by Robert Hendrickson (Facts on File,
New York, 1997).